LMS eCommerce: B2C and B2B Feature Sets

Selling online learning content is a huge and rapidly growing business. Corporations, associations, universities, training companies, public institutions and individual subject matter experts are all creating and selling content on every conceivable topic.

The content providers are in fierce competition with each other for learners resulting in significant industry innovation in marketing tactics, content design, user engagement and learning technology. Plenty of reasons are driving the demand for the content, but I believe the two biggest factors are 1) Closing the gap between the world’s educational system and the skills actually needed by employers and 2) Ongoing professional continuing education. The business of selling content, not to your own employees, but to others is called extended enterprise learning.

Business to Business (B2B) — Sell content in bulk to organization for their learners

To sell online content in either model, you need an extended enterprise LMS with ecommerce capability. Over the last 20 months I have conducted in-depth reviews of 102 LMS solutions and have found 85 that promote some level of ecommerce but there is a wide diversity of capabilities. The biggest difference is primarily due to whether the LMS is designed to sell to individuals, organizations, both or neither.

For this post, I’ve consolidated and organized all the ecommerce features I have found in the industry to illustrate what is out there for either business model. If you are shopping for an ecommerce LMS, it is really important to find one that specializes in your ecommerce business model.

B2C LMS eCommerce Features

Selling to individual consumer learners is typically the first level of ecommerce support that LMS vendors develop because the features are very similar to the ecommerce features that exist to sell anything from books, laptops to tractor parts with existing ecommerce platforms. Typical features in B2C LMS ecommerce include:

Basic Features

Deep-linking directly to content from anywhere outside the LMS

Browse catalog of content before logging in or creating an account

Sell any type of learning of any media uniquely or in a bundle

Product reviews and ratings

Coupons, promotions discounts

Credit card, PayPal or Stripe payment types

Add to cart, checkout and integration with payment gateways for credit card authorization

Most LMSs develop the above features natively but several integrate with pure ecommerce engines like Shopify or Magento to provide the above. The integration approach provides for rich pure commerce functionality but mandates the administration and maintenance of two applications resulting in higher costs.

B2B LMS eCommerce Features

Selling content in bulk to organizations for their employees is tougher than it looks. For example, if a hospital buys 100 seats of a continuing medical education course, how do they get their doctors to find the LMS, the course and consume it? Just that learner provisioning piece alone causes administrative nightmares if an LMS hasn’t developed work flow to support.

To further complicate matters, the actual “commerce” transaction can happen in an external system and passed to the LMS via API integration or the organizational purchase can happen directly in the LMS . B2B eCommerce features include:

Conclusion

Like never before, educational content providers of all types have the tools and technology to run a first class ecommerce business. Innovation and competition are rampant. When reviewing LMS vendor websites, at first blush it appears that they all have the same ecommerce features — and to an extent they do. The big ecommerce differentiator is if the LMS is geared towards selling to individuals, organizations or both. However, there are many other factors to consider if you want to sell content. My best recommendation is to fully develop your business model, LMS use case scenarios and resulting requirements before engaging LMS vendors so you can find the best-qualified options to drive your online learning business.

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There is tremendous diversity among the nearly 700 learning management systems available today. And when customer education is a top priority, it pays for organizations to choose an LMS designed specifically for that purpose.

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Join John Leh, Talented Learning lead analyst and CEO, and Terry Lydon, VP of Training Operations Projects at Litmos, as they explain the value of choosing an externally focused LMS. Specifically, they discuss: You’ll learn:

How to quantify the benefits of customer learning

Which factors set a customer LMS apart from employee-focused platforms

What case studies reveal about the value of customer learning technology

John Leh is CEO and Lead Analyst at Talented Learning, LLC. Named one of the Top 20 Global Elearning Movers and Shakers of 2017, John is a fiercely independent LMS selection consultant and blogger who helps organizations develop and implement technology strategies – primarily for the extended enterprise. John's advice is based on 20 years of industry experience, having served as a trusted LMS selection and sales adviser to more than 100 learning organizations with a total technology spend of more than $65 million. He helps organizations define their business case, identify requirements, short-list vendors, write and manage RFPs and negotiate a great deal. You can connect with John on Twitter at @JohnLeh or on LinkedIn.